June 12, 2007

In possibly the most hypocritical statement of principle ever issued, Yahoo has criticized the Chinese government for imprisoning people for expressing anti-government views online.

Yahoo glosses over the fact that they’re being sued by the World Organization for Human Rights USA on behalf of journalist Shi Tao (sentenced to ten years in prison for circulating an e-mail about the Chinese governments restrictions on the media) and reporter Wang Xiaoning and his wife (imprisoned for distributing pro-democracy writings).

(Officially, these offenses are “leaking state secrets” and “incitement to subvert state power,” respectively)

Yahoo assisted in all three prosecutions by turning over account information about Shi and Wang to the Chinese government. They justify this by insisting that in order to do business in China, they have to adhere to Chinese law. They deplore this sort of thing, of course, but what’s a company to do? Business is business, you know.

Sixty-some years ago, the word for people and companies doing business with Nazi Germany on Nazi Germany’s terms was “collaborators.”